The UK-based team coordinating election observers for Somaliland have welcomed the recent announcement that the vote has officially been scheduled for 26 June 2010.

A Catholic international development charity has welcomed comments about poverty from the leader of the Catholic Church in England & Wales - including an apparently softer line on condoms.

Haitian communities must be nurtured now and supported long into the future if the country is to secure a new reality for its people and build resilience to natural and man-made shocks, says Progressio.

Long-term reconstruction and development in Haiti must be locally led if it is to have any chance of success, the Catholic agency Progressio says two weeks after a devastating earthquake rocked the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere.